


daisy dukes

by lovelylogans



Category: Sanders Sides, Sanders Sides (Web Series), Thomas Sanders, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders - Freeform, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Irresponsible Drinking, Morality | Patton Sanders - Freeform, Sanders Sides (Video Blogging RPF), Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Swearing, Underage Drinking, patton's a good friend, roman needs hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 03:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelylogans/pseuds/lovelylogans
Summary: It had been a bad week.Nothing had particularly caused it. No bad grade, or snide words, or upsetting news. Just a week full of Roman feeling like he wanted to rip off his own skin out of sheer boredom, the cursor blinking menacingly at him from the pages of a word document, and the only notifications on his phone from people trying to maintain some kind of social media milestone. Just a week full of awkward small talk, an absent roommate, and music filling up the silence of his dorm room. Just his melodrama deciding to act up again, just his brain throwing a hissy fit when it didn’t have to do so.





	daisy dukes

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to warnadudenexttime‘s roman edit on tumblr, [here](https://warnadudenexttime.tumblr.com/post/169167347402/happy-new-years-eve-everybody-this-shall-be), which was on loop the whole time i was writing this. title is from california girls, which i didn't know could be used against me like that

It had been a bad week.

Nothing had particularly caused it. No bad grade, or snide words, or upsetting news. Just a week full of Roman feeling like he wanted to rip off his own skin out of sheer boredom, the cursor blinking menacingly at him from the pages of a word document, and the only notifications on his phone from people trying to maintain some kind of social media milestone. Just a week full of awkward small talk, an absent roommate, and music filling up the silence of his dorm room. Just his melodrama deciding to act up again, just his brain throwing a hissy fit when it didn’t _have_ to do so.

Patton would tell him to reach out, to talk to someone. 

The thought of Patton—sweet, kind, _wonderful_  Patton—dropping whatever Friday night plans he surely had, just to sit and listen to Roman whine about how he was feeling _sad,_  and _lonely,_  and _miserable,_  actually made Roman want to break something, so he wasn’t going to do that. It wasn’t Patton’s fault that he’d picked a tiny college two states and five hours away, good for Patton’s future career, while Roman had stayed in their home state. It wasn’t Patton’s fault that Roman hadn’t been able to talk to anyone. It wasn’t Patton’s responsibility, and it wasn’t Patton’s problem, and he would _not_  have Patton— _pitying_  him.

He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to _think_  about it.

Roman slipped his headphones around his neck, grabbed his key, and slouched out into the hallway, down the stairs, to the vending machine nestled in the basement. He passed by two girls toting makeup bags, chattering loudly about something at a Greek organization, a string of foreign syllables strung together that had graced Roman’s ears often enough in the past few months. 

He fed a dollar into the vending machine. He got some orange flavored soda. He fed another dollar into the machine, and got another one. He slouched back to his room. He dropped to his knees in front of his bed, and pulled out the black safe his parents had gotten him in a midst of theft concerns that Roman had used for only one thing. He fished the key out of its hiding face, and knelt again, opening it.

He pulled out the bottle of vodka, and rose to his feet. 

He picked up the plastic cup he’d stolen from the dining hall weeks ago and began to mix his drink. _Alchemy,_  he thought to himself. The only kind of chemistry he could ever understand.

He’s working on draining the cup for the third time before he thought, fuzzily, about the Greek party the two girls mentioned. He looked at his cup. He measured the weight of the glass vodka bottle in his hands, heavier than expected.

Greek party meant free booze. Free booze meant not draining what little supply he had. Greek party also meant people barring him from the party unless he _knew_  people, which, fucking clearly, he _didn’t_.

Unless he was creative about it.

And, past week aside, Roman _knows_  how to be creative. It’s one of his only redeeming qualities.

He looks at the vodka bottle, his plastic cup, and grins at it a little.

 _Going to frat parties alone is dangerous, Roman,_  a voice that sounds remarkably like Patton’s echoes in his ears. _It’s irresponsible._

 _Maybe I **want** dangerous,_  he thought next, and abruptly cut off that line of thought before it could go anywhere... bad. 

_College years are all about irresponsible, right?_

He drained his plastic cup, and turned to his closet. If he was going to do this, he had to look and act the part.

He got ready in his room, smoothing over his hair with his hand, because he didn’t want to make the trek down the hall to the bathrooms, and also mirrors weren’t all that appealing at the moment, and picked out the best outfit he could. He scrolled through social media for about fifteen minutes, before he straightened his shirt and strode out of his room, out of his dorm, and into the cold wintry night. He shuddered, tucked his hands under his armpits, bent his head, and speedwalked to the frat house—still took ten minutes. He slowed as he heard the bass thumping, and surveyed the house. 

It was ridiculous—pillars and a grand doorway and a walkway lined with dead, unflowering bushes—and Roman circled the house, once, twice.

There were boys guarding the doors. He saw clusters of women get waved in, and stray men get waved away. Roman frowned, and pinched at his shirt, and thought. 

He didn’t have to think very long.

“Hey!” Someone called, and Roman felt someone clap their hand on his shoulder. He jolted, and turned.

“I didn’t know you were in a frat,” the girl said. Roman could place her face—she was in his intro to acting course—but not her name. Roman hesitated, looking to the house, and back to her. There was a cluster of her friends behind her.

“I’m not,” Roman said, and decided to be honest. “I just want to get drunk, and I don’t have a fake. So.” He gestured weakly to the house. For a moment, everything was still.

Then she threw her head back and laughed, and slung an arm around his shoulders. “How ‘bout I help with that?”

Roman blinked. “Really?”

“Really,” she said, and with some gesture to the group, the cluster of girls clouded around them, and she frogmarched him forwards, not letting her arm leave his shoulders.

The boy at the door was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, open over his bare chest. He frowned at Roman.

“He’s with us,” the girl piped up, and smiled at the boy. “He’s in a different chapter. He’s from UCLA.”

The boy drew back, looking at Roman, previous scowl gone. “Oh, sick. Sup, dude?”

“Sup,” Roman agreed, and bumped fists with him as the boy waved their whole group in, and Roman looked at the girl. In. He didn’t even have to try to think of a solution.

“I owe you,” he said.

She waved him off, and just as suddenly as she’d appeared, she and her group vanished into the crush of people. 

Roman squashed down the feeling of disappointment. _She didn’t have any obligation to talk to you,_  he scolded himself. 

The frat party was just like any other frat party: the only light was from the funky bulbs some poor rushing freshman probably had spent the whole day screwing in, throwing everyone’s faces into odd shadows. The talking was loud, but the music was louder. It was crowded, and people were bobbing to the beat. It’s a frat party; nothing fancy, nothing too out of the ordinary. Just rap music, and drunk people, and cheap alcohol mixed with cheaper soda. 

He knew what to expect. A tiny basement with some kind of pole that the drunkest would try to dance on. People grinding like there was no tomorrow. The ground sticky with spilled drinks. People making out in corners. Pockets and clusters of dancing people. 

Roman closed his eyes for a second. Breathe in, breathe out.

He opened his eyes, and let a charming smile stick itself upon his face as he gently shoved his way through the crowd, heading for the booze.

The people manning the bar seem a little overwhelmed, or a bit too preoccupied with the girls leaning heavily on the counter, batting her eyelashes. So Roman takes two red solo cups, and fills them to their brims before sweeping his way out onto the dance floor, already working on transferring its contents into his body as quickly as possible.

He didn’t want to think. So he had to drink, and fast, so his thoughts got to that enjoyably floaty stage, where he couldn’t hang onto a thought if he _tried,_  ideas and realizations and impressions floating through his fingers like smoke, never to be seen again. 

It turned out, downing two red solo cups filled up with vodka and just enough soda to make it so that he didn’t gag at the taste within five minutes of each other did that pretty handily.

He went back and drank two more. Just to be really sure.

Then a song starts playing, and something about the slow bass beat burrows its way into his bones, and he nudges his way closer to the center of the dance floor.

He could do this, too. He knew he could.

It was like the song was moving _him,_  the song a current or an ocean wave, and Roman was doing all he could to stay afloat, to move with it. His eyes slid shut, and he let himself crest and fall with it; his hips swayed, his arms curled, his torso twisted. 

He was aware of the people surrounding him, the room heating to ridiculous degrees, though that might have been the booze, too. It’s the sea of anonymous bodies, pressing in on him, closing him in, like he was amongst their ranks. They surge and eddy with the wave, with the beat, guided by the same bass, the same warmth in their stomachs, all of them a single entity of motion and sensation.

Colored lights exploded behind his eyelids. All that mattered was the beat. All that mattered was the music, the lyrics, the beat, the drums and synthetic rhythm. He didn’t matter. It didn’t _matter_  that he was sad, he was _here,_  and that was what mattered. He wasn’t going to _think._  Roman danced harder, like if he moved well enough, if he was graceful enough and suave enough and _good_   _enough_ , he wouldn’t be so fucking _sad_  anymore, like all his problems would be fixed.

He went to get some more drinks. The exact number of how many he’d had was starting to get blurry. He went back to the dance floor.

He could smell sweat and vodka and an edge of something that was either perfume or cologne. The vodka was puckering his mouth, the obnoxious sweetness of the soda clung to his tongue. He didn’t want these things. He didn’t want to _feel_  them. He wanted to be—he didn’t even _know_  what he wanted to be. Some kind of organism, its only thought of functioning in this noisy current of this ocean of bodies. Like his body could only express rhythm and sensuality, his place in this bizarre ecosystem.

And he doesn’t know if it’s the vodka hitting him at last, or the fact that the song has changed to things he recognized—but, gloriously, it started to _work._

The music matched his heartbeat, and he could feel his heartbeat thundering away in his chest. He moved, faster faster faster, almost clumsy with it, but feeling so eager and _bright_  for once, bouncing and swaying and swinging as the beat declares, and he’s so familiar with the cresting waves now, practically surfing them. The atmosphere’s infectious, and as he got into the flow of it, Roman realized he hadn’t even been focusing on keeping a smile on his face; and yet, his cheeks were hurting anyways. 

He _loved_  this. He loved it _so much._  It was like he was shaking all of the bad out of his body, sweating it out, stomping it underfoot, letting the beat whisk it all away. Dancing almost felt more intoxicating than the vodka, at this point, and he was just— _lost_  in it. He was dancing for himself, lost in it. 

Something hedonistic and joyous was building up inside of him, and he _laughed_  with it _,_ the sheer energy inside of him _,_  and then he opened his eyes.

There was no one with him.

The smile slipped, fell, crashed off of his face. The laugh faded abruptly.

It felt like the stupidest realization in the world. Roman had come alone. He had had passing conversations, at best, with the other people here. 

He’d come to forget. Mission fucking accomplished. He hadn’t anticipated the pain of _remembering._

It was like someone had flipped a switch inside of him. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted out, _now._  He wanted to be plastered and stupid and _alone._  

He pivoted sharply, and started to shove his way towards the bar. People barely paid him any mind, too busy talking and laughing with their _friends,_  and God, Roman was the _freak_  who’d come to a party, _alone,_ and danced, _alone,_  and expected people to _like him for it._

What a fucking joke.

He didn’t _matter_  to these people. He was such a small, _forgettable_  blip on their radar that they weren’t even bothering expending the energy of forming an opinion of him.  And... and maybe they shouldn’t.

The bar had been mostly abandoned. Roman calmly went behind, dug around, and came out with a travel mug the size of his head. And then another red solo cup. Just because.

Roman shouldered his way up the stairs, ignoring the “hey!” of a girl, and fled the building.

He started to walk.

He kept on walking. He occasionally found his feet to be a bit cumbersome, and he would pause to take deep gulps of his drink, before he kept going. He didn’t know where he was going. He just knew he didn’t want to go back to an empty room.

Surprisingly, there were still people wandering campus at this hour. A few people seemed to be just as intoxicated as he was; others just seemed like night owls. Roman surveyed them all, and wondered if his desperation was quite as obvious from the outside.

Finally, he managed to crash onto the quad, and took solace, sitting on the ground, leaning his back against a pedestal that held some weird modern art sculpture, shuddering from the sensation of cold stone up against his back.

Something buzzed against his ass. Roman frowned, and dug his phone out of his pocket, squinting at the screen.

**message from dadshine**

Roman swallowed, drew his knees up close to his chest, and took a deep breath before he unlocked his phone, fumblingly clicking his way over to the messages app.

 **dadshine:**  hey ro!! sorry i haven’t been texting this week, project had me swamped!! but i just saw that disney made this recipe and i thought of you <3 hope you’re doing well!

There was a link to Disney’s facebook page. Roman didn’t bother to click it yet.

 **princey:**  misd u patoon

Less than thirty seconds passed before the phone buzzed again. Within that thirty seconds, Roman had taken five gulps from the travel mug.

 **dadshine:**  i miss you too!! we have to organize a facetime movie session soon!!  
**princey:**  yah  
**princey:**  csn it be didney?  
**dadshine:**  ??? you okay, ro??  
**princey:**  webt yo a oarty  
**princey:**  kinda drubk  
**princey:** lov u lots

The travel mug was much lighter. It took him a few seconds to realize that “I Am The Walrus” was coming from his phone, not from a distant passing car.

“Lo,” he mumbled. 

“I love you too, Roman,” Patton said, and Roman huddled up tight, a hand coming up to his forehead, because even as much as the phone distorted his voice, this was still _Patton,_  his best friend in the whole wide _world._

“Were you busy?” Roman asked, and his tongue felt much more difficult to operate than usual. “M’sorry. You should get back to—“

“No, I was just watching _101 Dalmatians,”_ Patton said, voice soothing. 

“You love that movie,” Roman whispered into the phone. His breath was making smoky curlicues in the air. “Y’should. Get back to it.”

“How much have you had?” Patton pressed, and Roman’s eyes squeezed shut. Because he knew how this would go: Roman would tell him that he couldn’t remember, and Patton would be quietly upset about it, and he’d be so gentle with Roman that it would feel like Roman could shatter from it. 

“Lot,” he said quietly, examining how red his fingers had gotten. That was normal in the cold, right?

And, yes, there it was: the soft, worried sigh that made Roman feel like he was about two feet tall. 

“Are you still at the party?”

“No.” Roman whispered.

“Are you home?”

Roman looked out at the quad, and then went back to examining the backs of his eyelids. “No.”

“Do you... do you have someone there with you?”

Roman’s eyes squeezed shut tighter, and his fingers pressed, near-painful, into his forehead. He could never lie to Patton. “No.”

“What about the people you went with?! Did they just— _leave you_  alone—?”

“I went alone,” Roman choked out.

There was a pregnant silence. Roman could hear Patton’s breaths, careful and measured.

“Please don’t ask it,” Roman managed to say.

“Roman,” Patton murmured. “I just—“

“ _Don’t_ , okay? I went to a party, _alone_ , with my only intention to get really, truly fucked up, I’m sitting outside in the middle of February, freezing my ass off, because I didn’t want to go back. You and I both know the answer before you even ask it.”

A pause, then:

“Do you have a coat, at least?” Patton asked meekly.

“For fuck’s _sake,”_  Roman said, and started to laugh, not cruelly, but the kind of laughter that came when he was trying really hard not to cry. 

Patton let his laughter die down before he said, “You should get back to your dorm, Roman, it’s freezing where you are.”

Like that, any sense of laughter withered up and died in his chest.

“It’s,” he began, but the words stuck in his throat. “I don’t want to,” he said, and he realized he sounded petulant, like a child, and Patton was just trying to help, but—

But he just didn’t want to.

“I know,” Patton said, and Roman blinked, looking up and out before realizing there was no one else, and, again, the sound was coming from his phone.

“You _are_  doing something.” Roman said, straining his ears, trying to deduce what it was. But he was just so, _so_  drunk.

“Nothing important, just fidgeting, go back to your dorm, Roman,” Patton said.

“I—“ Roman began, and huffed. “I don’t—“

“Why not?” Patton asked, and oh no, his voice had taken on that gently shattering edge again, and Roman shivered, not entirely from the cold.

“Lonely,” he forced out between his teeth.

Whatever Patton was doing hushed. Then it resumed again at double time.

“Well,” Patton said, keeping his voice light, “Good thing you’re on the phone with me, then.”

“No, it’s not—“ Roman began, and huffed again, eyes squeezing shut. “I’m— _alone.”_

Another pause. “You’ve got me.”

Roman snorted, scuffed his shoe over the stone. 

“You _do,”_  Patton said, forceful. “Now get up and go to your dorm, or I’ll—I’ll start playing the Shrek soundtrack!”

“You wouldn’t,” Roman scoffed.

“I absolutely would,” Patton said. “Do you want me to start singing All Star? I _will.”_

Roman didn’t doubt it for a second. “Okay,” Roman sighed. “Okay, I’m getting up, fine.”

“Good,” Patton said, firmly.

The walk from the quad to his dorm seemed much shorter with Patton chattering away in his ear. If Roman didn’t know Patton, he wouldn’t have noticed the undercurrent of worry in his voice. But Roman did know Patton, so he couldn’t help but hyperfixate on it.

“I’m in my dorm,” he told Patton when he’d managed to unlock his door, and for a moment, Roman was terrified of Patton hanging up with him.

“Good,” Patton said. “You should drink some water.”

Roman shuddered with relief. Patton wouldn’t hang up on him. Not now. Not when Patton knows Roman is sad and drunk off his ass.

Roman drank his water, and then drank some more, and got ready for bed with Patton’s gentle urging. He washed his face, and brushed his teeth, and changed into pajamas. The whole time, Patton kept up a soothingly brainless stream of chatter for Roman to sink into, letting him _hmm_  and _oh_  his way through the conversation. 

Roman laid down in his bed when Patton told him to, and put his phone on speaker, setting it on his bedside table before he laid his head down on his pillow.

“You’re all tucked in?” Patton checked.

“Mmhmm.”

“Snug as a bug in a rug?”

Roman hummed. “As a bug in a rug. You should read me to sleep, or somethin’.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Patton said, softly. 

“Yeah?” Roman asked, already on that edge between sleep and waking.

“Once upon a time, there was a very handsome prince named Roman.” Patton began. “He loved to sing, and dance, and act. The whole kingdom would gather around to watch him perform, for he was very talented, and it was his favorite thing in the world, so it made their prince very happy. And the kingdom loved to see their prince happy.”

Roman’s fists curled into his blankets, and his eyes slid lazily shut.

“Prince Roman was very close friends with a... jester? Let’s go with jester. The court’s jester, Patton, who loved to see Prince Roman happy. They grew to be very close friends, very good friends, and it made the jester very happy to spend time with the prince.”

He was very warm. Patton’s voice was soothing, the babbling rush of a brook, a voice Roman had been familiar with for almost all of his life.

“But the prince and the jester both grew to be of age, and both were sent away on quests. They were both sent away to study their crafts, to form new allies for the kingdom, and to slay a couple of dragons, while they were away. The jester cried the night before leaving for his quest, because he wasn’t sure how he would be able to see the world without the prince by his side.”

Roman’s eyes popped open. Patton hadn’t told him that. He was about to ask, but Patton was rushing ahead. 

“But the prince would face a large and dangerous dragon, one he had never had to struggle with, because he had always had the jester beside him. This dragon was also magic—a _dragon witch,_  if you will. She was cunning, and dastardly, and had it out for the prince, because she was jealous of how happy and talented the prince was. The dragon witch saw that the prince and the jester were apart, and decided to make her move.

“The prince had been having trouble before, but when the dragon witch struck, the prince found himself wounded, cursed, and unable to call for help. The curse left him feeling a kind of sadness that he had never known before, a kind of loneliness he had never faced. Fortunately for the prince, however, a letter from the jester arrived, just in time, and the prince realized how to defeat the curse. So he composed a letter as quickly as he could, and the jester dropped everything he was doing, so they could slay the dragon witch together, once and for all...”

Roman was slip, slip, slipping, and Patton’s voice faded away.

* * *

Roman awoke to the repeated and desperate sound of someone trying to knock their knuckles off on his door.

Roman groaned, and checked the time. Oh, great, four hours of sleep. Of all the times for his roommate to randomly pop back in—

“Coming,” Roman creaked at the door, staggering to his feet and clapping a hand to his head as his vision swam. The knocking did not cease.

“All right, I said I’m coming,” Roman snapped at the door, and opened it.

He didn’t have the time to look at who it was before he was almost knocked over.

Patton. Patton was _here._

He had his face buried in Roman’s shoulder, arms wrapped around him tight, like he was trying to squeeze the life out of Roman, and Roman only hesitated for a second before sweeping Patton into his arms, trying to hold him as close as possible. There is something in his chest, growing, warm and bright.

When they separated, Roman’s mouth was hanging open, and his eyes were maybe a little wetter than they were before. He didn’t let go of Patton’s shoulder’s—it almost felt like if he’d let go, Patton would fade.

“Patton,” Roman breathed. “I—you—“

“You’re not alone,” Patton said, stubborn. “Okay? You’re not alone.”

“I—did you just _drive_  all the way here?”

Patton hesitated, and said, “You were feeling sad.”

“Oh, my _God,_  Patton,” Roman said, trying not to laugh, and instead tugged Patton in for another, shorter hug, the thing in his chest not decreased at all. “How long has it been since you _slept?”_

“Like,” Patton said, and scrunched his nose, trying to think.

“If it takes you that long to come up with a number, it’s been too long,” Roman said decisively, and shut the door behind him. “C’mon, we’re both exhausted. We can snuggle.”

“Snuggling sounds good,” Patton said, and Roman sat on his bed as Patton rustled through his bag, tugging out his pajamas, and Roman felt the fondness swell up in his throat, dangerous and overwhelming.

They were Winnie-the-Pooh themed. Patton had packed _Disney pajamas_  to stay with Roman.

“D’you wanna be big spoon or little spoon?” Paton asked, folding up his glasses and handing them to Roman, so he could set them on the nightstand. 

Roman paused, considering, and said at last, “Little spoon.”

"S _poon-_ purb _,”_  Patton teased, and Roman groaned, even as he was tugging back the blankets so they could both get under them.

“Awful,” Roman said, but he was grinning too wide to really make it look like he meant it.

“Yeah, you missed me,” Patton said, clambering in beside Roman as they both laid down on their sides.

Roman smiled, feeling the comforting weight and warmth of Patton against his back.

“Yeah, I really did,” he said, soft.

Patton pressed a soft, chaste kiss to the back of his head, and nuzzled into the back of his neck. “Go back to sleep, Roman.”

“Love you,” Roman murmured, and he felt Patton’s smile against his skin.

“I love you too, Ro.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is [lovelylogans!](https://lovelylogans.tumblr.com)


End file.
